Glenn Greenwald, the investigative journalist who first published Edward Snowden leaks, said that the NSA whistleblower still has "a huge number of very significant stories to reveal," including those relating to Israel.

"There definitely are stories left that involve the Middle
East, that involve Israel. The reporting is going to continue at
roughly the same pace that has been happening," the former
Guardian journalist said in an interview with Channel 10
television station that aired Monday night.

"I don’t want to preview any stories that aren’t yet
published, but it’s definitely the case that there are a huge
number of very significant stories that are left to report,"
the Brazil-based Greenwald said, adding that the journalists will
continue releasing stories "at roughly the same pace that has
been happening."

"We have only had these documents for seven months, which,
given their volume and complexity, is not a very long time,"
he noted.

Documents leaked in December by former NSA contractor, Edward
Snowden, revealed that the US National Security Agency worked
hand in hand with the UK's GCHQ to target email addresses
belonging to the then-serving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, among others. According to an
exclusive report by the Israeli news agency, Debka, specializing
in intelligence and security news, after 2009 Washington
introduced "a high-powered, multilayered system of
intelligence-gathering” – especially against Israel, about which
neither Snowden nor the Israelis have been forthcoming. This
system, the agency claimed, had a "single narrow focus: to pick
up the slightest murmur or clue suggesting that Israel was about
to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, which it had
threatened to do without prior notice to Washington."

"Listening in on the laconic conversations Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu held with Ehud Barak was not enough. What the
spies were told to look for was out-of-the-way conduct, such as
an order placed suddenly for a large quantity of aircraft fuel,
or the import of an unusual amount of emergency medical
equipment," Debka's report concluded.

The NSA responded to media reports claiming it had spied on top
Israeli brass by saying that it is "not going to comment
publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity,"
while NSA spokeswoman, Bernadette Meehan, added that the US
"gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all
nations."

After Snowden's revelations top Israeli politicians demanded that
the US stop "systematically spying" on Israel. Although
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office at first chose to
stifle the scandal, with the growing public outrage he has,
however, demanded investigation into the matter. "In the
close ties between Israel and the United States, there are things
that must not be done and that are not acceptable to us,"
Netanyahu said speaking to the left-wing Likud party meeting in
the Knesset on December 23.

A number of Israeli politicians and lawmakers said that Israel
had to use the revelations of US spying to press Washington to
free jailed Israeli agent, Jonathan Pollard, a spy jailed for
passing classified material to Israel while working as a US Naval
intelligence analyst. He revealed information that Iran, Syria,
Iraq and Libya were busy developing weapons of mass destruction
to attack Israel. The whistleblower pleaded guilty and received a
life sentence in 1987. In 1995 Israel granted him citizenship,
and has lobbied for his release since then. Pollard has already
spent nearly 30 years in a federal prison, an all-time record, as
no one in US history has ever been given a life sentence for a
similar offense, whose average time is usually between two and
four years.

Greenwald said Israel was "absolutely right" in linking
the NSA spying to the Jonathan Pollard case because "it does
underlie, underscore exactly the hypocrisy that lies at the
center of so much of what the US government does."

"When the US government goes around the world criticizing
other countries for spying on allies and prosecuting them, are
they going to maintain that with a straight face when they’re
doing exactly that?" the journalist wondered.
Snowden’s previous NSA files that made headlines across the world
have revealed US operations targeting Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff’s cellphone as well as Angela Merkel’s.

"The United States government loves to claim that the value
of surveillance is to stop terrorism. Does the United States
government think that Angela Merkel is a terrorist or that
Israel’s democratically elected officials are involved in
terrorism?" Greenwald wrapped up.